


Serva Me, Servabo Te

by SansSoucis



Series: Kissing Knuckles [1]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Bittersweet, Childhood, Childhood Sweethearts, Children, Dark, England and France's childhood, England/Britannia, Fluff, FrUK, FrUK/Ukfr - Freeform, France/Gaul, Gaul - Freeform, Historical, M/M, Nature, One Shot, Part of this is fluffy the other part is kinda dark, Roman Britain, Roman Empire, Sweet, Underlying dark themes, ukfr - Freeform, unhealthy Rome/France dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-09-23 02:38:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17071901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SansSoucis/pseuds/SansSoucis
Summary: "And it is on a midsummer’s day, with the sun high up in the cloudless sky, when a wild-eyed Gaul stands before him with muddy feet and garlands of roses and ivy woven into his hair, that Britannia decides to reach up and silence his careless giggles with a kiss."Before France was France and England was England, they were children in love.





	Serva Me, Servabo Te

**Author's Note:**

> "Serva Me, Servabo Te; Save me and I will save you."

Rome, dark and marred and damaged as he was, fostered a love for everything that was beauty. So when Gaul came to live at his house in 51st year before the birth of Christ, he made sure to apply lavender oil to his wrists and red ochre to his cheeks, asked for his tunics to be tailored a little tighter and untangled his hair from the intricately knotted braids behind his ears so it could freely dance and twirl around his head. Rome appreciated resistance, so Gaul addressed him in haughty tones that no other servant dared to use, and no matter how often his guardian shook his head at him and his idleness and whispers of a vain, immoral barbarian child spread like wildfire throughout the palace halls, when the sun set above the vineyards and the wine was flowing richly, Rome tended to forget that Gaul was physically only ten years of age, speaking to him in lewd tones and promises of greatness as his hands wandered about. And Gaul was unashamed to admit that he greatly enjoyed the thrill of having the mighty empire, whose lands stretched from Grecia and all around the _Mare Nostrum_ to Hispania and up to Britannia in the north, at his feet.

Unfortunately, however, Rome seemed to have caught on to his cunning plan to capture his heart and trade it for power, because on one early summer morning in 120 AD, Gaul was summoned to his chambers in a voice that allowed no protest, only to be informed of the fact that he was to be sent away, to Britannia of all places, and no matter how Gaul raged and seethed and stomped his sandals on the marble floor, _demanding_ that Rome let him stay at the _Palatium_ , his guardian remained unrelenting.

“You’re growing up too fast, _Gallia_. The Gods have gifted you an eternity of existence, my sweet, surely you can afford to stay young a little longer?”

And usually when Rome spoke, the room tended to mould itself around his warm voice of smoked oakwood and molten honey, but now the sculptured _acathi_ on the ceiling remained cold and distant as he gritted the words out through his teeth as if it physically pained him to say them. Gaul still knew there was little truth to the words however, because his eyes -dark like ebony and smouldering like embers- lingered on the tightly-synched waist of Gaul’s tunic even as he spoke.

“Do you want me to stay a dim-witted infant forever then?” He countered therefore, unable to keep the bitterness from his voice because he knew that Rome harboured this exact wish, for children were easier to hold down and control. But he had no idea who he was up against, as Gaul was not a pushover like Hispania, or thoughtlessly pliant like one of Rome’s many catamites, instead having learnt to wield his beauty like a weapon during the two centuries spent under the empire’s wing.

“We both know that dim-witted is not a term used to describe you, _Gallia._ ” His guardian spoke with a bitter smile. “Instead I fear that that silver tongue of yours runs too quick for its own good. Those words you speak- rotten, _vile_ people could consider them an invitation.”

“Have you ever considered that perhaps they are? An _invitation_?’ Gaul said sharply as he sauntered over to where Rome was lounging on the _lectus_ and daringly laid his lily-white hand on his scruffy cheek, making sure to mimic the lowered voice he had heard Rome’s many _many_ lovers – from boys barely three years his senior to whores and slaves and women no longer fertile- use countless of times.

Something dark and hungry – an expression named _lust_ that Gaul would come to encounter many times in his later life but was unbeknownst to him at the time- twitched over his guardians face before it flushed heavily with anger.

“Do not tempt me, _Gallia!_ ” He hissed, drawing away from Gaul as if burned, conflict bristling painfully in his eyes. “Stop playing with fire, you cursed child of Venus! You have no idea what madness you spark in me! He rose, tunic billowing around him as he made his way towards the door to leave Gaul to his angry tears, bellow of his voice echoing throughout the galleries. 

“I am sending you to Britannia. I am sending you to Britannia and you will play with him like the _child_ you are! May the Gods have mercy on us _both!_ ”

* * *

And it was with those words echoing around in his mind that Gaul found himself shivering underneath his woollen cloak as the horses’ hooves sunk away into the mud and the sky poured itself down on their heads as the merchants’ caravan slowly made its way to _Londinium,_ the sun-bathed palace on the seventh hill and the streets of the capital buzzing with priestesses and vendors and stray dogs only distant whispers of a memory.

The lands they crossed were barren and empty and Gaul bitterly mused that surely Britannia himself ought to be awfully boring as well. And he could indeed conclude, as he came to stand before the child on a drizzly summer's day, that the only thing even remotely interesting about Britannia were his eyes, piercing green like the grassy plains that he called his home and framed by the most grotesque brows he had ever set sight upon. Apart from that, Britannia was a mere savage, who stood about half  of Gaul's own height and spent his days muttering in incomprehensible tongues and gathering seashells from the comfortless shores. 

Even now, as Gaul towered above him, arms crossed in expectation, the little tyke refused to properly acknowledge him, instead knitting his absurdly large eyebrows together in utmost focus as he sharpened his arrows.

“It is terribly rude to ignore your guests, you know.” He said snootily, and Britannia continued to run his knife over the wood with abrupt, rhythmic strokes before regarding the the other child with a scowl so spiteful that Gaul suspected it could set villages ablaze.

“It is not like I _invited_ you here.” He said in deficient Latin, before turning back to his arrows again.

After being pampered, spoiled and admired in the capital for more than two centuries, Gaul’s jaw hung aghast at being addressed in such a disinterested manner.

“Well, it is not like I _want_ to be here!” he said, a bit more whiny than he would have preferred. “I come from the capital, from a palace on a hill!  We’ve got..we’ve got marble halls decorated with _acanthi_ , and we eat grapes straight from the vine! The port brings us goods from all over the world! Cloves and cinnamon and diamonds and rubies from India! The finest silks from _Sinae!_ ”

He stomped his foot on the damp earth for good measure, sending specks of dirt flying into Britannia’s straw-like hair. “And here! Here there is _nothing_! Only mud and grass a-and _sheep!_ You’re barely a step away from the barbarians in the north!”

Britannia studied Gaul’s pink cheeks and the way his curls have tumbled from underneath his hood and into his eyes during his tantrum, appearing severely unimpressed.

“ _You_.. talk too much.” was all he said, before sliding his arrows into his quiver with practiced ease and darting away into the woods, leaving Gaul to fume in the dirt.

* * *

 And as the years progress and the leaves on the woodland grounds turn crisp with the frost of early winter, Gaul learns that Britannia doesn’t like to speak out loud, and appears to like being around Gaul even less. And thus, as Britannia wades through freezing mud to shoot at rabbits and woodpigeons, Gaul curls up under his cloak on the barren shores, peering over the grey restlessly moving waters, pretending he can see the  _Palatium_ and Rome's seven hills instead

Britannia lets him be, regarding his angrily hunched back with a shrug of his own shoulders. Gaul is a mystery to him. A _whiny_ mystery, because the other child cries so often Britannia is surprised he still hasn’t run out of tears to spill. When he attempted to push Gaul down into the tallgrass to have a romp like he used to do with his older brother before the wall tore them apart, he had cried. And when Britannia had felt a little guilty after said incident and brought him a finely skinned hare ready to be roasted, he had cried even harder.

The extent of emotions the other child seemed to experience were exasperating to little Britannia, who preferred to communicate through balled fists and a tightly strung bow. But alas, something about Gaul’s chirpy, infinite voice seemed to have rubbed off on him, because when autumn comes again, Britannia starts talking at the same time as Gaul gets bored with staring at the empty horizon and starts accompanying him into the woods.

“Why do you still live here?” The older child asks him one day, flush-cheeked and slightly out of breath, for Britannia moves so quickly that he has to jog unceremoniously in order to keep up with his fast, tiny paces.  “You are one of Rome’s aren’t you? Why do you not live at the _Palatium_ like _Hispania_ and I do?”

“He tried to take me, he did.” Britannia growls, unruly hair falling into his eyes as he kneels between knobbly tree roots covered in moss, disabling Gaul from seeing his face. “I threw stones at him, bit his hand, that sort of stuff. Then he left.”

“But why would you do such a thing?” Gaul asks in astonishment as he watches Britannia’s chubby fingers pluck at mushrooms with viper-quick motions. Britannia knows the other child is almost infatuated with the empire, which is incomprehensible to him as he only knows the Rome of bare-toothed snarls and raised swords, not the one of comforting caresses and crooned compliments that seems to star in Gaul’s elaborate stories.

“Because he came and took my land! He killed my men and pillaged my villages! He trapped my brother Caledonia behind a wall!” He growls, fuming with anger at the thought, tossing the shrooms into the basket held between Gaul’s white-knuckled fingers. “Rome is a vile, _greedy_ creature, who is undeserving of anything but an arrow through his skull!”

And Gaul stares at him wide-eyed and pale-faced, lips quivering as he is taken back to memories he has desperately tried to suppress, memories of soldiers sweeping into his lands and setting fire to houses made of clay and straw, memories of the screams of the dying and the silence of the dead, memories of a woman with blue eyes very much like his own, yelling at him in a tongue that seemed foreign to him now, begging him to flee, to _hide_ , before she was crudely silenced by the plunge of a _gladius_ into her throat..

Afterwards, Gaul is uncharacteristically silent as they continue their way through the woods and soft rays of moonlight start to fall through the canopy and onto the muddy grounds. For once, Britannia decides not to tease him as his eyes start to water, instead gathers twigs into a pile and instructs Gaul to clean the mushrooms as he rubs his firestones together. Chanterelles and boletes roast above a crackling fire as Britannia tells stories of silly woodland spirits and his brothers’ countless antics, and as Gaul’s hesitant laugh finally breaks through his tears, he feels oddly happy.

* * *

Years and years later, when the thaw sets in and the blackbird resumes its song, Britannia is tormented by a foreign fluttering sensation in his stomach whenever he looks at how Gaul treads feather-lightly over the glistening grass in search of snowdrops and crocuses to braid into his hair.

The edge of his tunic, spun from the softest wools and dyed with the bluest paints the capital had to offer, has unravelled and darkened with dirt and mud and moss, and his hair, untamed by golden brushes and lavish oils, tangles in wild, frizzy ringlets around his head, but to Britannia it is the loveliest Gaul has ever looked, and much to his own surprise (and embarrassment) he finds himself combing the beach for white or blue shells to thread into a necklace that he hopes Gaul will like.

Spring arrives in budding blossoms and the song of chaffinches and willow warblers echoing throughout the woodlands, and he brings Gaul dove-feathers and primroses and bluebells and handfuls of strawberries, and Gaul accepts every gift with a laugh and sometimes with a tear, pressing his lips to his brow and hands in gratitude as long as a gradually crimson-turning Britannia allows him to.

Feigned protests and eyerolling aside, Britannia lets himself be guided by Gaul’s colourful descriptions of the mainland and carves him a Palatium out of oakwood to the best of his abilities, and in return Gaul sings him lullabies and cradles Britannia against his chest as they sleep by the fire, and at the same time as Britannia discovers how nice it is to be held, Gaul learns what it is like to love without expecting something in return.

Over time, nasty memories of broad hands creeping up thighs and of brothers trapped behind walls fade into nothingness as Gaul and Britannia crown themselves with asters and honeysuckle and lilies-of-the-valley and adorn their wrists and ankles with chains of seashells and acorns, roasting chestnuts above fires and eating blackberries straight from the heavy branches of the bramble, laughing and singing as they dance and play about their palace, their paradise.

And it is on a midsummer’s day, with the sun high-up in the cloudless sky, when a wild-eyed Gaul stands before him with muddy feet and garlands of roses and ivy woven into his hair, that Britannia decides to reach up and silence his careless giggles with a kiss.

It is sloppy and wet and he is not sure if either of them likes it, but the radiant smile Gaul gifts him when they pull apart soothes his worries and the straining ache in his toes. From that moment onwards, as the earth keeps steadily turning in its orbit and sun and moon loyally make their paths throughout the skies, Gaul often kneels down to steal a kiss, and Britannia gladly lets him, and when one day Gaul decides to push him down into the tallgrass and slip his nimble hands underneath his tunic, he pays few objections to that too.

To all good things must come an end, however, and for Gaul and Britannia it arrives in the darkened shapes of ships against the horizon as the empire shakes on its foundations and Rome suddenly longs to keep his favourite province close. And as the leaves wither and tumble to the ground in a flourish of coppers and reds, Britannia stands sobbing on the shores, sniffling his freckled button-nose in a way that reminds Gaul so much of a little rabbit that he has to laugh in spite of his own tears. He slides one of his golden ringlets off of his fingers ands presses it into Britannia’s smaller hand, asks him to keep it safe until he returns, and Britannia makes a great show of tucking it into the front of his tunic where it rests snugly against his heart. They part with a quick brush of lips, and Britannia keeps capturing the kisses Gaul blows him until the other is just a tiny dot lost amidst the thundering waves, both children blissfully unaware of the fact that their next encounter on the island would take place with the two of them standing on opposite ends of a sword.

**Author's Note:**

> Latin and some interesting facts:  
> Acanthi (plural of acanthus); In architecture, an ornament may be carved into stone or wood to resemble leaves from the Mediterranean species of the Acanthus genus of plants, which have deeply cut leaves with some similarity to those of the thistle and poppy.  
> Palatium: Palace  
> The Palatium was a palace that was built upon one of Rome's seven hills, from which multiple Roman emperors reigned.  
> Hispania: Spain  
> Mare Nostrum: Mediteranean Sea  
> Caledonia: Scotland  
> Lectus: A Roman couch, often used at dinner (Romans dined while lying down)  
> Red ochre was used as blush in the Roman Empire. Red ochre was imported from Belgium and was expensive, cheaper blushes were made from red chalk or roses or extremely toxic red lead. If you wore too much makeup during Roman times, you were thought to be a prostitute!  
> Gallia: Gaul, which would later become France.  
> Sinae: China. The Romans traded goods like glass and silverware for Chinese silk  
> Gladius: A Roman type of sword


End file.
